Communities throughout the United States will soon see a sharp decline in local coverage of sports, news, school board and city council meetings, among many other events, that help keep residents informed.
To me, small-town newspapers are important and I’m glad each of our subscribers and readers agree with that. The longer I am a journalist, the few papers that exist and the few number of actual journalists continue to drop.
Cody Thorn
Shareholders approved a merger between Gannett and Gatehouse, called New Media Investment Group now, that will create the largest media company. The $1.3B acquisition will see the combined company called Gannett and will oversee 260 daily publications and hundreds of weeklies, according to USA Today. New Media owns 152 papers, including The Examiner in Independence, the Columbia Daily Tribune, the Leavenworth Times across the river and one of my former employers, the Neosho Daily News.
However, many who have followed Gatehouse knows that will come. The new owners care about profits and not about the towns where they own papers. That is why I feel very fortunate to be working for a small ownership group that still values local news and the impact we have in attending games and meetings throughout the county.
I know the changing times for the newspaper business is tough but it is even tougher when it is operated under the mentality of Gatehouse. Cut staff. Expect remaining staff to do more and if that doesn’t save money, cut even more staff.
For example, when I worked for the Neosho paper, we had a publisher, an editor, three news writers and myself, running sports. We even had money in the budget then that allowed me to have a part-time sports writer to help me.
Now, the paper has one employee, a community editor, who has to do it all. The paper went from printing six days a week to now once a week. A lot has changed in nine years.
The number of journalists fell 45 percent nationwide from 2004 to 2017, according to a study done by the Pew Research Center.
That is the norm for Gatehouse papers. I had buddies work for The Waynesville Daily Guide and that paper shut its doors last fall. They cut the staff. People quit subscribing because it wasn’t what they were used to and Gatehouse essentially saw the profits weren’t there so it cut bait. The Daily Guide went from 3,600 copies printed daily to 675 at the end.
Gatehouse did the same thing late last year to the paper in Carthage, the Carthage Press, which had been open for more than 100 years.
But the Gatehouse CEO made $1.7 million last year, so apparently things were tough around there and belt-tightening needed to happen. So what will this new merger do? USA Today said the plan is to cut $275 to $300 million in costs within the next 18 to 24 months in a variety of areas. You can read into that staff for one. There was even a story that suggested that USA Today’s print product will cease by next year.
Waynesville is a town of more than 5,000 people, with a nearby military base and a high school with athletics in Class 4 and 5. Not a single event is covered by a newspaper and those two towns are just some of more than 1,800 cities to lose a newspaper over the past 15 years, according to a story by the Associated Press. More than 500 of those closed were in small rural towns.
There are towns now that are ‘news deserts’ and it is sad to see. Not too far from here, there used to be a paper for Liberty, Kearney and Smithville. Now the David Bradley-owned weeklies in the Kansas City metro combined for one paper, The Courier-Tribune and you can find people in each town upset over the coverage of three towns and four school districts in a weekly paper with a staff of two writers.
There are many reasons for the decline and many of them are battles papers are still fighting. Social media has became an official source, whether legitimate or not, which is troubling.
But can you imagine not reading the thousands of words Ross Martin writes on Platte County football each week? Or the happenings and outcomes of any of the other eight fall sports? Or updates on what the county commissions or local city councils are voting on or implementing?
The Associated Press talked to the police chief in Waynesville and said important information like robberies go unreported in print but might be mentioned in social media, but not everyone has a social media account. The same thing goes for those with the Internet. There are some people who don’t have it so how would they know?
I take a lot of pride in what we do each week and I feel we do our best to deliver a product that is worth reading and subscribing to as well. I haven’t mentioned this in a while, but its $2.50 a month. I promise you will be glad with what you see.
UPDATE ON PLATTE COUNTY
I received some clarification on the information about the racist documents that floated around last week.
So the document was created by a Barry School student but didn’t have anything in it and a Platte County High School student then posted the racist remarks that gained the attention from the Kansas City Star and television stations.
A lot of people have asked what happened to the student or students that who part in this egregious action? No idea and due to student confidentiality, it is likely the media won’t officially know what will happen with the student(s) involved. A few comments on the story on our Facebook page showed some people were upset and demanded a harsh penalty and one even said the student(s) should be kicked out of school.
I doubt that would happen but who knows. What happens will come out at some point because things like that get out in small towns. Heck, my daughter, who is a junior at the high school, asked me if I heard about what (fill in the blank) did? I said, yes, but that I didn’t know his name but I was aware of what the document said thanks to screen shots.
THIS AND THAT
The new Razr cellphone advertisement I have seen takes me back to my younger days when I had one and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I’m curious to see how well it does in terms of sales because of how different the flip phone smartphone is compared to the rest on the market. Also it will cost $1,499 to buy or $62.49 a month to pay off over two years.
Dairy Farmers of America, which used to have an office on Interstate 29, is in talks to acquire Dean Foods Co., though other buyers could emerge. DFA is a co-op that has around 14,000 farmer members and are trying have a secure market for the members’ milk, according to a story on Yahoo! One of the biggest hits for Dean, which filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 12, is when its biggest customer, Walmart, dropped them after building its own dairy plant. Conventional milk consumption has dropped in recent years and milk alternative is expected to top $18B in sales this year, up 3.5 percent from 2018. Sales for cow milk, as of Oct. 26, are around $12B, down $3B from last year and down $15B since 2015.